Shinji Aoba, the Japanese arsonist who killed 36 Kyoto Animation employees by setting its studio on fire last 2019, has been sentenced to death last Thursday, Jan. 25, according to Japan Times.
A photo of the remains of the burned down building after the arson, Kyoto Animation Studio 1, taken on July 21, 2019, in Kyoto, Japan.
Aoba, Guilty for One of Japan's Deadliest Mass Murders
The Kyoto District Court has found 45-year-old Aoba guilty of committing the country's worst mass killing in the past two decades after he had set the three-floor building ablaze.
He reportedly had a grudge against the animation studio for "plagiarizing" his work which prompted him to do the heinous act.
Dozens of staff members were working at the building at the time of the crime, and because the fire had spread so rapidly, a lot of the workers were unable to escape the ensuing conflagration. Besides the terrible loss of 36 lives, another 32 were injured because of the incident.
The district court's presiding Judge Keisuke Masude described Aoba's actions as "truly atrocious and inhumane" during his ruling. He added that the magnitude of the loss and damage that occurred after the studio was swallowed by the fire was "too serious and tragic."
He also said: "The horror and pain of the victims who died in Studio 1, which turned into a hell in an instant, or who died afterward, is beyond description."
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Behind the Final Ruling in the Murder-Arson Case
In a news conference held the same year the incident happened, the police who initially arrested Aoba said that he was inflicted with unspecified mental health issues, CNN reports.
Aoba pleaded not guilty in a separate trial held last September, as his defense counsel argued that the defendant was suffering from a mental disorder, that if proven, would absolve him of any criminal responsibility.
The prosecution, instead, countered with a request for the death penalty, putting forward the notion that the defendant was wholly competent and mentally present when he did his crime.
Only Japan and some US states still include capital punishment as part of their penal code, with an exception only for those who are deemed to be disabled or are suffering from proven disabilities, something Aoba declared he had.
However, the judge ruled last Thursday that the arsonist could unequivocally separate what is right or wrong during the enactment of the crime.
